McDonald's screen of death. I remain unsurprised.

A recent post from IFLScience.com claims that microbiologists from London Metropolitan University conducted swabbing on touch screens in McDonald's restaurants in London and Birmingham, finding coliforms, Bacillus and Listeria.  They also found Staphylococcus, Pseudomonas, Enterococcus faecalis and Klebsiella.

All of these bacteria are capably of causing infections, and you will find some discussion of these bacteria on this blog site - see labels.

But should we be surprised and should customers at McDonald's be concerned?  Well, I am not at all suprised.  If a microbiologist conducts swabbing in any public place, such as a supermarket, they will find all of these bacteria, perhaps on trolley handles, push plates on doors, in the toilets etc.  As for the customers, if they are concerned, they could order their meal on the touch screen, then wash their hands, or use a hand sanitiser.  Be honest - if you go to any fast food joint after you have been shopping in the mall, do you always wash your hands before you eat?

The original research was done for Metro (see https://metro.co.uk/2018/11/28/poo-found-on-every-mcdonalds-touchscreen-tested-8178486/).   Not surprisingly, when this post was published on FaceBook, there were 1.2 thousand comments and nearly a thousand shares.  My personal opinion is that this article was written and published for shock value and to boost circulation.  Interestingly, a video clip posted on this same site showed that the majority of customers were not surprised by the findings and would still go and purchase food there.

Whatever you think of McDonald's or any other fast food outlet, in my opinion, the researchers are making a mountain out of a molehill, and IFLScience is making it worse.  Don't pick on just one fast food chain, and think about how you protect yourself and your family from infection.

And while you are at it, think about a similar scenario in your own home.

Food for thought:  How do you recognise the microbiologists around you?  They are the people who use their little fingers or elbows to open doors, use a paper towel to turn the taps off in a public washbasin, use a knuckle on the touch screen and who often use hand sanitiser before eating in public.

I've been served some pretty awfull coffee in my time ...

Many people on Twitter are reporting that a pregnant woman in Alberta ordered a latte at a McDonald's but was served a cup containing cleaning fluid.

According to a report on CBC News, this was caused by the coffee machine still being connected to two cleaning solution supply lines, rather than the milk reservoir.  The cleaning chemical was a mixture of citric acid, phosphoric acid, methyl-trimethyl-3, and 2-butoxyethanol.  There is no doubt that ingestion of this material would be harmful.

It's not clear whether the cup contained hot liquid, though if the machine were set to deliver coffee, but connected to a cleaning chemical supply, it's likely that the cup did feel normal, and since it was a takeaway, it would have been fitted with a lid, so gave no indication that it didn't contain latte.

This potentially very dangerous incident gives a lesson:  if you are a pilot, a car driver, or the operator of a food processing machine, the principles are pretty much the same - the pre-start checks must always be conducted before any start and done properly.

MPI provides an interactive tool to determine your responsibilities under The Food Act 2014

The New Zealand Food Act 2014 comes into force on 1st March, 2016.  This will not be news to major food manufacturers, but does affect everyone working in the food industry; their responsibility is to produce safe food.

The new Act focusses on the processes of food production, rather than the premises where these activities are carried out. i.e. the old "floors, walls and ceilings" approach is long gone.  The other major difference from earlier legislation is that it takes account of the risk associated with any particular business (and that includes the activities of clubs and societies that raise funds via sales of food, such as pizzas).  The new Act brings in Food Control Plans for high risk food production and supply (in fact, many businesses have been operating under FCPs for some time), and introduces National Programmes for activities with lower risk.  Thus manufacture of ice cream is treated rather differently from the sale of coffee from a mobile operation at shows and open days.

One of the problems currently faced by smaller operations, such as corner dairies, saussage sizzles and community shared meals like club gatherings for members and guests, where food may be sold, but not as the primary purpose of the gathering, is knowing exactly what is required in terms of the regulations.  The New Zealand Ministry of Primary Industries (Te Manatu Ahu Matua) has provided an easy-to-use interactive tool to help all organisations involved in producing, selling and providing food to determine their responsibilities under the new Act.  The tool is called Where do I fit? and poses a series of questions you can answer by clicking responses.  The tool will then tell you your responsibilities and the requirements of the Act, together with links to further information.

I have not tested the tool extensively, but it is very easy to use and provides lots of helpful information.  I specifically tested it from the perspective of my gliding club's putting on a fundraiser and found the output very helpful.

Don't put Cleaning Chemicals in Food Containers!

It's happened again! According to Doug Powell's Barfblog Daily, a woman was poisoned and nearly died after drinking iced tea containing cleaning chemicals at a suburban Salt Lake City restaurant.


Apparently, a worker at the restaurant put cleaning lye (probably sodium hydroxide) into a sugar bag. A second worker put the material into an iced tea dispenser. The restaurant chain claims that this is the first time in 73 years that this has happened.


Indeed, if the restaurant chain is using any kind of food safety programme, this should never have happened, and as Doug says, "It has never happened before" is no defence. One of the basic principles of Good Catering Practice and HACCP is not to put non-food materials into food containers, and to store cleaning chemicals away from food.


There are many incidences of accidental poisoning occurring because of mis-identification of chemicals. All could have been avoided by using proper containers and labelling them clearly with the contents.


Of course, this principle doesn't just apply to restaurants - it is just as important at home. Ayesha tells me that the kitchen is her preserve, and she knows what is in the glass jars in the pantry. On some occasions when I have had to fend for myself, deciding on the identity of the white powders in the identical unlabelled glass jars has taxed my scientific abilities! Icing sugar and cornflower are subtly different, and custard powder is slightly yellow with a vanilla odour. Salt and castor sugar look the same but taste different. These are trivial examples, but in the high pressure of a restaurant kitchen, unlabelled materials, or worse, mislabelled materials are unlikely to be identified and will find their way into foods, sometimes with serious consequences.

Where's my PhD student?

I had a scheduled meeting with my PhD student this morning, but she didn't turn up.  I got a somewhat graphic text message, saying that she had food poisoning.  It seems that she, her partner and two friends went out for dinner in a restaurant in Auckland on Saturday.  They all appear to have food poisoning.

Of course, this doesn't prove that the restaurant was responsible.  Indeed, her description of the symptoms and time of onset make me wonder if another common source was involved.

However, a TVNZ One News investigation shows that on average, one Auckland food establishment per week has been shut down this year because of safety or cleanliness violations.

http://tvnz.co.nz/health-news/shocking-food-hygiene-figures-auckland-3800902

An Auckland City Council Environmental Health spokesperson said that the increase in closures was a result of tougher action by health inspectors in response to unsatisfactory performance and suggested that this was partly because of the economic recession - companies were selling food that would previously have been thrown out.

A disturbing statistic given in the TVNZ report is that over 100 restaurants and cafes are still operating, despite poor hygiene ratings, though to be fair, businesses are given the opportunity to clean up their act before being closed down if they don't improve.

This report begs the question "If inspectors had previously found unsatisfactory conditions in food outlets, why didn't they close them down at the time?  What has changed in the requirements to serve wholesome, safe food in clean premises?"

It’s happened before, it’s happened again and it won’t be the last.

The Queenstown District Court (South Island, New Zealand) was told an all too familiar tale a couple of days ago. Two women had been poisoned and subsequently hospitalized after consuming a contaminated drink. On this occasion, the drink was mulled wine; the contaminant was sodium hydroxide – industrial dishwashing liquid.

At first sight, this would seem to be an impossible occurrence. Closer inspection shows a familiar pattern. I expected that the mulled wine would have been made on the premises from wine, sugar, cinnamon stick etc. However, the drink was apparently dispensed from a bulk container of pre-prepared “mulled wine”. Unfortunately, the container appears to have been used to deliver the cleaning chemical. Presumably, the label was not changed and the person serving the product didn’t detect the substituted liquid. It is not clear to me why the industrial chemical looked to all involved like mulled wine.

This is utterly poor practice of the worst sort. I have been teaching HACCP for the last 30 years and during the whole of that time, the use of food containers for other materials has been proscribed as part of the food safety plan. Proper labelling of containers is also critical. There have been so many cases where this practice has resulted in injury or even death that I have lost count. Some examples include preservative being mistaken for sugar; fire retardant powder being mistaken for cattle feed; cleaning agents being used in food preparation instead of the expected food ingredient. In one admittedly non-commercial case, a person died after drinking from a spirit bottle containing paraquat - a herbicide.

No food container should ever be used to store non-food chemicals; chemicals should not be stored with food ingredients and all containers should be clearly labelled with the identity of the contents.

The news just keeps on getting worse!

After so many years of living with a food microbiologist, my wife has become a valuable food retail spy. Today she told me two more horror stories:

In our local supermarket there is a display stand for unwrapped bakery goods that extends from about chest height down to the floor. The store manager has supplied tongs for customers to use and there are signs asking customers to use the tongs.

Today she arrived at the bakery counter in time to see a mother wrestling the tongs from her toddler. If this were not bad enough, the mother then said to the toddler “I thought you said you were going to eat that”. Grabbing a bun from the child’s other hand, she stuck it back in the cabinet. Now both of them had handled the bun.

Now, I realise that bread buns are not a particularly good growth medium for food poisoning bacteria, but this is unacceptable. Some food borne pathogens have a very low infecting dose. The display cabinet should be arranged so that products and tongs are inaccessible to toddlers. Owners of self-service food displays need to be aware that simply providing tongs does not guarantee the safety of the food they sell. Needless to say, we will not purchase unwrapped goods from that store again.

The second incident was observed on TVNZ’s Good Morning show. Unfortunately, I didn’t see it and have not been able to locate a replay on their website. It appears that The Mad Butcher was on the show and demonstrating the preparation of chicken. After handling the raw chicken, he put his fingers into some spices and tasted a pinch. The bowl of spices was thus contaminated with whatever bacteria were on the raw chicken. A short while later, he put a cooked chicken onto the same chopping board, contaminating it with raw poultry juices.

OK – the Mad Butcher is not a professional chef and neither is Steve Grey, the host for that segment. The poultry industry in New Zealand has had a bad press recently over Campylobacter food poisoning, allegedly transmitted largely via chicken (though in fact we have seen a significant and sustained reduction over the last year in the incidence of the disease in the human population). This sort of example on daytime television, which is probably watched by many young mothers, is perhaps one of the reasons that we see such a high incidence of campylobacteriosis in New Zealand. Young adults are not getting the food safety message and we need to have good kitchen habits shown on our national television channels. We can’t rely on the food suppliers to take total responsibility for control of food poisoning.

This type of poor kitchen practice is not confined to New Zealand; Doug Powell at Kansas State University, who runs the Food Safety Net and writes the Barfblog has castigated some TV chefs in the USA for similar indiscretions (see for example: http://barfblog.foodsafety.ksu.edu/tags/tv/).

Pigeon pie, anyone?

What does it take to make us clean up our act?

Having lived in Hong Kong for a while, I am perhaps more aware of the potential for the spread of diseases than the average Kiwi. The Chinese have suffered SARS and bird flu and are very keen to avoid more outbreaks of either. If you sneeze in public, people will stare accusingly at you; people who have a cold will voluntarily wear a face mask out of consideration for others; there are hand sanitizing stations around public buildings and patrons are warned not to feed birds in outdoor eating areas.

With these thoughts in mind, I have been surprised to see the couldn’t care less attitude of some businesses here at home. When a fly crawling over the goods in a bakery was pointed out to the assistant, she shrugged her shoulders and said that it was impossible to keep them out. There is a coffee and cake shop on the podium level of the apartment block where I live. They have a resident population of flies there too. But in addition, they have birds. Not in cages as decoration, but possibly as employees. These birds hop around on the floor and pick up crumbs. They also hop onto the tables on the terrace and finish off the meals left by the patrons – the plates stay on the tables long after the diners have left. This is just not acceptable in any food service premises.

New Zealand has been lucky and so far avoided bird flu scares. However, bird flu is not the only concern. When birds hop around on floors or tables and perch on chairs, they are inclined to leave droppings behind. If eventually an assistant comes to remove the plates, the table will be wiped with a cloth, spreading a thin film of droppings around and probably contaminating the whole surface with faecal bacteria and viruses. Of course, we don’t eat off the table, but it would be hard not to touch it and so there is a risk of ingesting these organisms, particularly if we eat cakes or breads with our fingers.

I would have expected these failings to be brought to the attention of the shop owners by the authorities. Perhaps we also put too much faith in antibacterial sprays. Are they an extension of the plastic glove = bullet-proof syndrome? We need to see safety in practice, not just in a manual on the manager’s shelf. I hope it will not take a SARS epidemic or outbreak of bird flu to convince these businesses to clean up their act.